Customer Reviews

Dia de Los Muertos

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Set in Tijuana, Dia de los Muertos is all about borders, between life and death, love and hate, doom and redemption, joy and despair. It's one day in the life of Vincent Calhoun, a rogue DEA agent who's run out of last chances. His colleagues are onto him, he owes more money than he could possibly repay, and he's dying of dengue fever -- but it seems to him that he might just be able to pull things out, especially when the love of his life gets off a prison bus in the town square. Dia de los Muertos combines nerve-wracking suspense with bizarre humor (a 400-pound mobster who needs to be smuggled across the border) and, above all, a wild and unexpected sense of romance. The new introduction by James Crumley places DIA squarely in the classic noir tradition.

This was a story which had its moments for me but overall the quality of the writing was just too uneven for my taste. The characters were adequately fleshed out, and the sense of place was nicely drawn but the dialogue was often stilted and the action ragged and even sometimes barely comprehensible. I gave it 3 stars for the idea and the promise but lack of fruitful execution.

This is the best noir novel I have ever read, bar none, and that includes Cain and Goodis. It has been said that noir is "people you don't like doing things you don't care about," but not this one. You come to care intensely about Calhoun and his doomed one-day run against Bordertown Fate. But mainly, you find yourself very quickly in the hands of someone who can write, and nothing else really matters in the end. Cheers to Kent for writing it and Dennis McMillan for publishing it and shame on St. Martins for giving it a pass.

This one was a delightful surprise for me. I loved the style of writting; noir at its best. The black humor was especially well done and appealed to my oddball sense of humor. The problems and roadblocks encountered in one day in the life of this man battling illness and life in general will keep you engrossed from page one. It's one of the books I'll hold on to and reread again just for the sheer pleasure of it.

When I picked this book up I wasn't sure what to expect, as it isn't a usual choice for me. At first I wasn't sure where the story was going and I spent the first chapter or so waiting to get to the meat of the plot...All of a sudden it dawned on me that I was already in the thick of it and that I couldn't put the book(or Kindle, as the case may be) down! the book basically spans a 24-48 hour period and it is an intense period for those involved. I don't want to give too much away, but the book takes place in the boarder town of Tijuana and the realities are harsh...I found myself pulling for a character, that under most circumstances, I wouldn't have cared for...Now that is skill, my friends. I highly recommend this book if you are looking for a good, fast paced, intense, read.

Dia de Los Muertos was the first of Kent Harrington's books that I've read. Not my usual choice, but I was really surprised how much I liked it. From the moment I started, I couldn't put it down. A very gritty locale and not some pretty despicable characters, as well. But the story's main character had an inner goodness that made you root for things to go well. Would absolutely recommend this book to anyone looking for an entertaining read.

I never forgot Kent Harrington's Dark Ride after I read it. I wondered for years what he had done next, because his work was not easy to find in the bookstores. Thanks to the Kindle, I have been able to enjoy more. What I like about the Harrington style is the combination of truly unsettling, often harrowing situations that still contain a pronounced vein of black humor. I'm now in the middle of Red Jungle, which is something of a departure, but still bears the same stamp.

Kent Harrington tells the story of Calhoun, a corrupt, renegade DEA agent who supplements his income by bringing illegals into the United States for a fee. Harrington deftly moves through Tiajuana's grimmest neighborhoods and paints a picture of a man -- deeply in debt to loan sharks and knee breakers -- whose badge offers no protection.

The book is filled with violence, dished out as well as received, by Calhoun. In addition to his psychic problems, Calhoun is also plagued with a fever and there are several surrealistic sequences when the reader is confronted with scenes that leave one wondering if it's real, or part of Calhoun's physical illness.

Despite his corruption, Calhoun is likable, sympathetic and has his own code -- albeit twisted backwards by life.

If you like both your cup of java and your reading strong & black, DIA DE LOS MUERTOS is right for you. Bad puns aside, Harrington's latest hard boiled gem is even nastier than his noir debut, DARK RIDE. Don't be a nit-picker and buy 'em both. You'll thank me in the end.

The 36 hours chronicled in this hard-boiled crime novel are among the pulpiest one is likely to find. Set in Tijuana during the Day of the Dead festival on November 2, the story follows Vince Calhoun, a DEA agent gone totally off the rails. As a young man he was a teacher in Southern California -- that is, until he couldn't keep his hands off a sexy student and was brought up on statutory rape charges. He chose Marines over jail, and it's implied, spent some dirty years in Central America at the behest of Uncle Sam. Now, he's a man with nothing to lose, smuggling people across the border for a hefty fee and losing all of this back at the greyhound tracks. Although he's scum, he's not the lowest scum in Tijuana -- that would be an Englishman named Slaughter, the one Vince owes a lot of money to.

The book all takes place in one crazy day and night, as Vince scrambles to cross four Chinese woman on one run, some wealthy Central Americans in another, borrow a boatload of money from a deadly loan shark for four hours, place it on a "can't miss" tip from a friend, all while trying to stave off dengue fever that has him bleeding from the eyes and ears. Oh yeah, there's also the small matter of the love of his life (the former student) getting released from jail today. Plus, the final job of the day, to cross Mexico's Most Wanted, an immobile 500 pound tub of lard drug dealer that everyone is gunning for. Get the picture?

Basically, the book consists of Vince's non-stop running around trying desperately to hold things together amidst the chaos of Tijuana. There's plenty of violence, drugs, and of course sex -- notably involving a sexy statuesque Latina carrying a gun in one hand and a strap-on "marital aid" in the other. The book oozes local color, from the boy who parades the donkey to drum up business for the legendary show, to the "rat patrols" of off-duty judiciales who cruise the desert looking to rob and murder border-crossers, armband-wearing fascist party members rioting against foreigners, Indian girl fortune tellers, dead-eyed bartenders, crooked cops, and on and on and on. Not for the faint of heart, the book is one long binge of sleaze and grotesquery, every development crazier and more absurd than the next. The story of a doomed loser has been told many times, but other than an extra dollop of kaleidoscopic vividness, this version doesn't have a lot to offer.